Sunday, May 16, 2010

Bloomberg is Not the Enemy of Gun Rights

FishyJay sent me this New York Times article about Mayor Bloomberg's plans to streamline the system for obtaining gun permits in NYC.

The Bloomberg administration announced on Friday that it was moving to simplify the process for New Yorkers to obtain gun permits, thus speeding up a set of byzantine licensing requirements that gun-rights advocates have long criticized as among the most restrictive in the country.

Now, that doesn't sound like the ogre gun rights advocates like to make him.

A spokesman for the mayor said on Friday that despite Mr. Bloomberg’s continuing fight, he had never taken issue with legal gun ownership, a perspective that Colin Weaver, of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, said he was in sync with.

“The mayor is focused on crime control, not gun control,” said the Bloomberg spokesman, Jason Post. “He has no problem with people who want to go hunting. The issue is illegal guns that are killing people and, all too often, police officers.”

"The mayor is focused on crime control, not gun control." Who could object to that?

Even Alan Jura said it “sounds like progress.” What's your opinion? Wait, let me guess. Some will say it's too vague and won't change anything, that the system will continue to be too subjective. Others will say, the statement is political smoke and doesn't mean anything. And of course, we'll have some who insist Bloomberg is the enemy and we can't trust anything he says.

What do you think? Myself, I believe it when Bloomberg says he has nothing against legitimate gun ownership and that he's interested in crime control not gun control.

TS, that's one take on it. Another is this article is just a clarification of Bloomberg's position from the beginning as opposed to a developing movement towards compromise. Maybe you guys have had him wrong all along.

AztecRed: “This is nothing more than a preemptive move because Bloomberg knows a smack down is coming in the form of the McDonald v. Chicago ruling.”

Very true. San Francisco caved on their city housing ban because they knew fighting it would be a waste of money (they got burned by that before). Daley is not only willing to waste taxpayer’s money, but will ultimately give momentum to the rights side with a highly publicized supreme court victory. He is not even playing checkers, he is playing tic-tac-toe.

From the article: But the timing of the decision was curious to some, as it follows a 2008 Supreme Court ruling that struck down parts of the gun-control law in the District of Columbia and subsequent challenges to gun laws in other places.

So: First Washington has gun laws struck down, then Chicago is expected to have gun laws struck down, and just at that point Bloomberg reverses decades of NYC making NYC gun laws harder and harder to comply with...because of a sudden urge to do the right thing?

Hay mikeb, what gun loon said the below?

From the article: "If I were working for the mayor in New York, in the legal department particularly, I’d be saying: 'Are we sure we can defend these laws? Are there things to do, ahead of time, that will make it easier for us to defend them?' I would be surprised if that were not the thinking."